Topic: How come humans are the only apes to evolve hairless?
+Anonymous A — 9.1 years ago #48,207
Yet gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans retain their body hair.
Is it possible that another hairless ape could evolve in billion years time?
+Anonymous B — 9.1 years ago, 16 minutes later[T] [B] #523,150
No one really knows why we split off the mainline. We've been homo sapiens proper for 200,000 years yet we can only trace the civilized man back to about 12000 with any definite certainty and even THAT is being disputed.
The common idea is that somewhere along the line we started wearing animal skins but even that's bizarre when you think about it since we came out from africa presumably hairy still. The neanderthals living in europe at the time that we supposedly mixed with also would by virtue be hairy as well as they were surviving in colder climates so it's not like they would be the catalyst for change. You could argue that maybe as we migrated through russia/siberia/europe we got clothes but that wouldn't explain hair loss in the ones that were left behind in the warmer climates unless we had already established trade routes to exchange our new "clothes" that would take away our hair which would imply that we already had civilization in the first place and that opens up a HUUUUGE can of worms the likes of which modern man's ego would probably never recover.
It's just one of the more perplexing mysteries when it's all said and done. At the end of the day we're a species who doesn't know our origins.
Edit: Also as far as your other hairless species goes, in theory yes but I don't think we'll let it happen because that would mean making another species our equal. Then again liberals have proven themselves to have a never ending thirst for suicidal tendencies so who knows.
(Edited 6 minutes later.)
·Anonymous A (OP) — 9.1 years ago, 1 hour later, 2 hours after the original post[T] [B] #523,155
@previous (B)
I should have specified a bit more when I said another hairless species since I now recall there are already other hairless species. The naked mole rat for starters as well as those hairless cats. I mostly referred to another hairless intelligent species like humans or even another hairless ape. What I said would have been false as they exist.
So according to one theory, there is a chance that the ancient Mesopotamians weren't hairless and were hairy much like gorillas or chimpanzees?
Is this why UFOlogists like to insert extraterrestrials into the mix as being a culprit of existence as we stand now?
·Anonymous B — 9.1 years ago, 46 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[T] [B] #523,157
@previous (A)
> The naked mole rat for starters as well as those hairless cats.
Yeah but these animals probably live in temperate climates not cold. That's the question with humans since we went into every biome there is. Why did we become hairless if that goes against what evolution would dictate and not grow hair? If we were hairless before we moved into these biomes then the hunter-gather theory of our proliferation is flat out wrong and civilization is MUCH older than even our most generous estimates put it at. If, however, the hunter gather theory is true and we moved as somewhat hairy apes throughout the world and only lost our fur gradually why are we ALL fairly hairless nowadays? Maybe our conception of how we spread is completely wrong in ways we can't even imagine. For example, maybe we didn't even cross the bering into the americas but we were here when pangea still was and that's how we managed to get here. Maybe life started out in the americas and then moved into the "old world".
This is why it's so interesting and so mysterious. Something doesn't add up and like usual academia is in denial because any cracks in their armor means they'll get attacked every which way by crackpots and skeptics. UFOlogists inset ET everywhere so you can't really count on them for unbiased theory making. ET itself is an easy way out for everything, from magic to the supernatural that's really why they're thrown out whenever there's a mystery. Again, there's just something wrong about the whole story and everyone is in some sort of denial over it.
Personally I like the take that civilization is much older than we think but through the passage of time it's been lost and our only records are probably the spoken stories that we've managed to preserve through culture. Stuff like The illiad and oddyssey, the bible etc which themselves are probably evolutions of even older works passed down through time immemorial.
(Edited 5 minutes later.)
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